Just How Many NYC Parks are Burning?
A rash of high-profile brush fires have dominated attention, but nobody really knows how many fires have actually happened in NYC Parks.
In a city that’s generally rainy, the past couple of months have been shockingly dry. October was the driest month on record in the City. If you’re like me, for the past two weeks or so, your various feeds have been dominated by headlines, takes, and shocking images of various NYC Parks ablaze.
While most of the attention has gone to more high-profile parks, like Prospect Park, there’s been fires all over. The largest fire, in Staten Island’s Brookfield Park, was initially reported as 50-100 acres, dwarfing the 2 acres that burned in the Nethermead. Brookfield is one of my favorite parks in the City, and one I consider among the most underrated, so I’m especially sad to see it hit so hard.
Just how many NYC Parks fires have erupted in this outbreak? As far as I can tell, nobody knows — or at least if they do they aren’t publicly sharing it. The City’s relevant Open Data portals haven’t been updated, and even if they had, the relevant datasets aren’t exactly set up to easily tag for Parks.
As of writing, FDNY has reported fighting 229 brush fires in past two weeks. I set out to find out just how many have happened in NYC Parks. I’m sure this list is missing many of them, but it’s all I’ve been able to find any amount of reporting about. Some of these were widely reported, others barely talked about online at all. Know of another brush fire in an NYC Park not on this list? Let me know, if there’s enough, I may do a follow-up post. Some of these, like Isham Park, have virtually nothing online about them, except for Twitter sources like NYC Fire Wire. If these were false alarms, sorry in advance.
Without further ado, here’s every fire in an NYC Park that I’ve been able to find:
Alley Pond Park: Brush fire on November 13th
Bronx Park: Brush fire on October 31st, image here
Brookfield Park: Brush fire on November 6th
Clove Lakes Park: 4 Brush fires between October 28th and November 6th
Flushing Meadows Corona Park: Details uncertain but reported
Fort Tryon Park: Brush fire on November 4th
Highbridge Park, Bronx: Brush fire on November 8th
Inwood Hill Park: Brush fire on November 13th
Isham Park: Brush fire on November 13th
Marine Park: Two brush fires on November 9th, image here; Brush fire on November 13th
Prospect Park: Brush fire on November 8th; Brush fire on November 9th
University Woods: Brush fire on November 9th
Van Cortlandt Park: Multiple major fires, possibly as high as two dozen over the past two weeks
Outside of the City, which I haven’t been tracking as closely, there’s been fires reported in the Palisades, Bear Mountain, and numerous around the NY/NJ border including the massive Jennings Creek Fire that’s now taken the life of an eighteen year old NY Parks worker and grown to 4000 acres.